GAIA: Rogue State (A Girl Power Novella) Read online

  She keeps waiting for a trap as she approaches one of the trucks. They let her go too easily. That could only mean they have something else planned. Whatever it might be, it wasn’t in the warehouse. The workers there line up on one side to watch her go. Someone has even left the keys in the truck she had come in on.

  She’s surprised to find the truck actually starts. And it doesn’t explode. “Must be our lucky day,” she says, not believing that for a second.

  “They’ll never let you escape,” Dr. Klinsmann says.

  “Probably not, but for your sake let’s hope they do.”

  The truck lumbers up a ramp, its engine straining to handle the incline. It has been a long time since she’s handled something this big; assassins don’t have much use for half-ton trucks. The gears shriek as she shifts.

  Their reception waits for her in the very place where she had stationed herself for the last three weeks. There are three of them, one armed with a tube that is probably an RPG launcher. That will be enough to disable the truck.

  “You’re trapped now, fool,” Dr. Klinsmann says.

  “Maybe.”

  She takes her cell phone out of a pocket. Now that she’s back on the surface she has a couple of bars. She doesn’t bother making a call; instead she punches a few numbers in. This triggers an emergency signal to indicate she needs an immediate pick-up. Her GPS coordinates will be transmitted as well. If she’s lucky Melanie will contact the Velocity Family, who could make it here in a minute or two. If they’re busy then she’ll be on her own for a while.

  Diane shoves the phone back into her pocket and then grabs Klinsmann’s arm. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “What are you doing? Surrender already!”

  “Not bloody likely.”

  You didn’t spend three weeks somewhere as a trained assassin without learning something about the layout. She creeps along the side of the truck until she has no choice but to make a run for it. It would be a lot easier without Klinsmann, but she’s not about to leave him now. If she’s going down then she’s making sure he does too.

  “Move it, Doc,” she says as she drags him across open ground, to an outcropping of rocks. That won’t be much safer from the RPG launcher, but it will at least force them to adjust their position. That will buy her more time.

  In the movies it takes only one bullet to make a truck explode. Even for a top-notch assassin like her it’s not that easy, especially for a truck with a thick hide. She needs an entire clip from one of the TEC-9s to breach the fuel tank. With the other one she fires blindly towards where the RPG was, hoping to keep them down.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Creating a distraction,” she says. She aims the Desert Eagle not for the fuel but slightly to the left. As she hoped the bullet strikes the rock, creating sparks that set the fuel off. Diane shoves Dr. Klinsmann down as the truck explodes.

  “Now you have no way to escape,” he says as the truck burns.

  “I’ll just have to get a ride then.”

  Black smoke billows from the truck. The wind steers it to obscure the rocks from up on the pass. That gives her a chance to put some distance between herself and the RPG launcher. “Come on, mate,” she says and then yanks the doctor to his feet.

  They move a lot slower than Diane would like, but no one shoots at them. For the moment it seems her plan has bought them some time. Plus all that smoke should help to serve as a beacon to any help that might be on the way.

  When she hears rotors she hopes it means an Australian military chopper is coming to pick them up. Then she sees it’s a Russian-made Havoc gunship. Diane looks around, but there’s nowhere to hide from the machine gun and missiles the gunship carries.

  “They’ve got you now,” Klinsmann says.

  She pulls him in front of her. “They’ll have to go through you to do it.”

  He squirms in her grasp, but can’t break free. The Havoc gets closer. For it to reach her so soon it must have taken off from somewhere near the cave. They might even have a hangar built into the thing that she didn’t see. She really should have explored more of the base, but there hadn’t been time. She supposes her career as a GAIA agent is about to come to a sudden end.

  The ground rattles slightly, followed by a sonic boom. Diane uses Klinsmann as a screen to shield her from the dust that’s kicked up as an object whizzes over her head. She can’t help but smile as she watches the gray-and-blue humanoid shape fly past.

  A couple of tiny objects shoot away from the shape. The Havoc gunship explodes in a ball of flame. Diane throws Klinsmann to the ground to make sure no pieces of it hit them. The roar of jet engines gets closer.

  Diane looks up with a grin to watch the robot land in front of them. The face of the robot opens to reveal that of a young woman with tan skin and blue eyebrows. “Hi, honey. Need a lift?”

  “Think you can carry both of us?”

  “Sure, at least a little ways.”

  Ordinarily there’s no way Tonya could lift Diane let alone her and Dr. Klinsmann, but her robot suit augments her strength enough that she can take one in each arm. The takeoff is a little difficult, but she gets them airborne. Perhaps for their safety she keeps them low, so they might only break both legs if they fall.

  “How’d you get there so fast?” Diane asks.

  “I’ve been doing some maintenance on our collectors out here,” Tonya says.

  “How long?”

  “About the last three weeks.”

  “What a coincidence. That’s how long I’ve been here.”

  “How odd.”

  “Melanie have you keeping tabs on me?”

  “No. She just said you were on an operation here and might run into some trouble.”

  “Well, that’s one I owe you.”

  “Just one?”

  “Perhaps more. We can discuss it later.”

  “So what’s the story with Baldy here?”

  Klinsmann doesn’t seem to take any offense at this; he seems too busy shaking and turning green to notice. “They’ve got a lab down there. He’s one of the scientists. I’ll explain the rest on the ground.”

  She did explain, but only after she gave Tonya about a two-minute kiss as payment for their rescue.

  Chapter 2

  Spy organizations are always supposed to have grand, elaborate headquarters like the CIA’s sprawling Langley complex. The headquarters for GAIA is in the basement of a UN building in Atomic City. To Diane it always smells like mothballs and mouse shit. The flickering fluorescent lights would probably give her seizures if she were an epileptic.

  GAIA’s version of Moneypenny is a plain young woman with plain light brown hair parted down the center and skin so pale it seems likely she was born down here. She’s clad in a bulky yellow cardigan to protect against the chill down here. The wire-frame glasses she wears magnify her eyes to give her an owlish look. In short she looks like she belongs at a library, not a spy agency.

  “Good morning, Diane. It’s nice to have you back.”

  “Thanks. Is the general in?”

  “She’s on the phone, but she should be ready to see you shortly. Would you like some coffee?”

  “I can manage it. Thanks.”

  Diane stalks off to her office, which is about the size of a closet. She’s never gotten around to decorating it except for a picture of Tonya on the desk. She’s on a bench in the park, the evening light making her blue hair glow. The picture is also her only nod to sentimentality.

  There are reams of papers waiting for her to go over. In the movies you never see James Bond or the like having to write up all their missions for their bosses, but like any bureaucracy GAIA runs on paperwork. With a sigh Diane shoves this to the side so she can make room for her computer.

  After she turned Klinsmann over to the Australian government to hold, Diane got to spend a whole lovely evening in Sydney with Tonya. They took Tonya’s private jet across the Pacific for a few more hours together, but in San Francisco they
had to part company. “I’ve got to check in at our Arizona facility,” Tonya said. “I’ll be home in a few days.”

  “I might be gone again by then. The general’s going to want me to start making inquiries about all this.”

  “I suppose so. Seems like we hardly get any time together.”

  “Makes what time we do have more fun,” Diane said. They kissed, but after a couple of minutes Diane had to get to her gate for the commercial flight to Atomic City.

  When she and Tonya first began seeing each other, Diane knew it was a mistake. They were both so busy with their new lives, Tonya with her science projects and Diane with GAIA, that there wouldn’t be much time for each other. They might never get to have what people would call a “normal relationship.”

  At the same time Diane couldn’t bring herself to break it off. She and Tonya had come to care about each other in a way Diane had never felt before, not even as a man. After what had happened with Omega and the invasion a lot of people knew what it felt like to go from a man to a woman, but hardly any could understand what it felt like to go from a villain to a hero. She and Tonya had helped to save the world, along with Melanie, Garlak, and the Super Squad. They had spent a lot of time with each other, going through the same growing pains. It was only natural they would be drawn together.

  Things have gone as she feared. Their schedules hardly ever align anymore, giving them a few hours here and there to see each other. They email, text, and Skype, but that can’t replace actually being in the same room. A few times Tonya has suggested Diane forget about GAIA and get a job in private security, perhaps for her company. She could go back to school as she planned to do, get her teaching certificate.

  It all sounds nice, but Diane can’t do it. Melanie needs her. Without Diane there couldn’t be a GAIA. That’s not ego, that’s a fact. She is the only field agent and it’s not like intelligence operatives are falling out of trees, especially not ones Melanie could trust.

  The phone on her desk rings. “The general is ready for you,” the secretary says.

  “Thanks.”

  Diane gets up from her desk. She takes a last forlorn look at Tonya’s picture before she goes next door to the general’s office.

  Melanie Amis looks almost identical to her secretary. She should since Melanie is the secretary’s daughter. Thanks to Omega’s weapon Melanie’s mother got another crack at her twenties. With nothing else to do and with the GAIA budget tighter than Scrooge’s purse, she went to work for her daughter. Seeing them together often gives visitors a start; they usually do a double-take to make sure they’re seeing two different people.

  Diane’s grateful Melanie isn’t in that awful powder blue-and-white catsuit she wears as “General Gaia.” Instead she’s wearing a royal blue suit. From the bags under her brown eyes she probably never went home last night. “Good morning, General.”

  “It’s morning at least,” Melanie says. Diane doesn’t envy her; she’s barely old enough to drink and here she is managing a spy outfit with the Secretary General of the UN and most of the world’s leaders on speed dial. “So I hear you had some interesting times in Australia.”

  “Terrifying is more the word I’d use.”

  Melanie nods. She tosses a stack of photos on the desk. Diane picks one up to see her picture of the mission control room. At least it all came out; she’d hate to have risked her neck snapping all those photos for them to come out blurry. “Terrifying seems like a good word for it.”

  “You get that weasel Klinsmann to squeal yet?”

  “He’s stonewalling us, but it shouldn’t take long for him to break.”

  “What about that lab?”

  “Starla went in that night. They’d already torched the place. Nothing we could use. Robin’s going over it with a fine-toothed comb, but I wouldn’t expect much.”

  “So what’s our next move?”

  “We’ll work on Klinsmann. In the meantime something else came in. Special request from the Secretary General.”

  “Sounds important.”

  “There’s been reports of fighting in central Africa. It’s disputed territory, the kind that changes hands two or three times a year. The Secretary says a few villages in the area have been wiped out. We’ve got satellites covering the area, but they want boots on the ground.”

  “My boots, yeah?”

  “Right. Afraid it’s not much of a holiday and I’m sure after that last mission you’d like a rest.”

  “No problem, General. I’ll do it. When does the plane take off?”

  “About four hours. Should be long enough to get your gear together.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She waits to sigh until she’s out of the office.

  ***

  Mom came into the office a few minutes after Diane left, bearing a pot of coffee and a plate of pastries. This always makes Melanie think of coming home after school to find milk and cookies waiting for her, something Mom continued until Melanie went to college. “Here you go, honey. I thought you might want a little snack.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re entirely too skinny. It’s all this stress.”

  “I’ll be fine, Mom.”

  Mom ignores this, setting the pastries in front of Melanie and then refilling her coffee mug. The latter Melanie is grateful for as she hasn’t gotten a lot of sleep since founding GAIA. There are far too many problems and she doesn’t have nearly the staff or funding to handle most of them.

  When the phone rings, Melanie knows another problem is about to rear its head. Mom snatches the phone before Melanie can. “Global Autonomous Intelligence Agency, General Amis’s office. Ah yes, hello again Miss Moon. She’s very busy at the moment—”

  Melanie slumps in her chair. Miss Moon refers to Sunny Moon, the founder of the Church of the Restoration, a pseudoreligious movement formed after the invasion for those like Mom who got a second chance at youth. Sunny Moon’s real name is Sung-Yee Lee; she had been an investment banker of fifty-two when the alien weapon changed everyone on Earth into women. Lee saw this as a divine event. To celebrate she took on her new name and began acting more like a teenager than a woman in her fifties. She has since grown her movement around the world.

  Melanie’s mother went to one of the CotR’s meetings in Redoubt City. They treated her with the reverence of the Virgin Mary once they learned her name. Melanie is something of a patron saint to Sunny Moon’s people as the first known case of a transformation thanks to the alien weapon, the Super Squad’s transformation having been covered up by the Pentagon.

  About the last thing Melanie wants is to waste time rebuffing another of Sunny’s attempts to convert her. But when Mom holds out the phone, her expression is deadly serious. “I think you should take this, honey. She says it’s important.”

  Melanie rolls her eyes as she takes the phone. “Hello, Miss Moon. What can I do for you?”

  “We have a super-serious problem, Mel. Some of my people have gone missing.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Duh, of course. They didn’t believe me.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Because they’re soooo dumb. They thought I was making it up. As if.”

  Melanie is glad this is a phone conversation so Moon can’t see her run a hand over her face in exasperation. She can understand what the police had gone through. “How about you start at the beginning, Miss Moon?”

  “Well, I was at one of our meetings in San Francisco. The band was totally killing it. Everyone was really into it. There was this flash of light. I thought at first it was an effect, but then people started screaming. And like a half-dozen girls were gone.”

  “Are you sure they didn’t just leave?”

  “Not unless they left naked. That’s the weird part: their clothes were still there but there was no one in them. It was like someone had beamed them up.”

  “And at this ‘meeting’ had you been drinking? Maybe smoking a joint?”

  “You soun
d like the pigs. I thought you might believe me.” Moon’s voice sounds more like that of a woman in her fifties when she says, “I didn’t imagine this. Neither did anyone else. Those girls vanished right out of their clothes. When I posted about it on our Facebook page, I found out stuff like this happened all over the place at like the same time.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “You’re the spy. You tell me.”

  Melanie closes her eyes and then pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’ll look into it,” she says, hating herself for giving in to another wild goose chase. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything.”

  “Thanks, Mel. I knew I could count on you. If you’d like to talk about this in person—”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll call if I find anything.”

  Melanie hangs up the phone. Mom pats her on the shoulder. “Thank you, honey. I know that woman is a bit nuts, but I don’t think she’d make up something like this.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Melanie says. Then she turns to her computer to get to work.

  Chapter 3

  Diane has a bag packed already. She keeps several bags stuffed with clothes and other supplies for when she might need to leave in a hurry. It’s something she learned from her days as an assassin, when the fuzz might come knocking on her door at any moment. Now it’s more to save time before a mission.

  She only has to go into her bedroom and grab the bag, but she’s not quick enough. She’s in the living room when she hears Tonya ask, “Where are you going?”

  Diane lets out a sigh. She had hoped she could wait to tell Tonya over the phone to save considerable effort. Now she’ll have to do it the hard way. “I got new orders. Have to get to the airport.”

  “Orders? Already? You just got back.”

  “You know how it is: no rest for the wicked.”

  When Tonya grabs her arm it would be easy enough for Diane to spin around and break it. Without that suit of hers, Tonya is a relatively puny girl. She resists the urge, doing nothing as Tonya says, “You’re not in any shape for a mission. You haven’t recovered from the last one.”